Winamp’s announcement that it will shut its doors on December 20 generated a pretty strong reaction from the program’s fans, who don’t want to see the app go. In fact, the support for Winamp is so strong, that its fans have created both a petition and a website in an effort to save it from extinction.
What’s more, the Winamp Change.org petition, which was created by Peter Z of Melbourne, Australia, just hit a milestone moments ago: 25,000 signatures.
The Change.org petition asks AOL, which owns Winamp, to make the source code available to the public. Doing so would, in the petition’s words, allow Winamp to “live on forever and be in the hands of people who love it and use it every day.”
The website, www.savewinamp.com, asks developers who support the idea of Winamp going open source, also includes a petition, as well as several video clips which demonstrate Winamp’s role in the history of consuming music digitally.
For what it’s worth, a report last week indicated that Microsoft was in talks with AOL to acquire Winamp. However, terms of the alleged deal were not available, and it’s currently unclear whether Microsoft and AOL have made any progress on a potential agreement. Moreover, it’s unclear that, if Microsoft were to acquire Winamp, whether Redmond would leave it unchanged, or tinker with it.
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